Joanna sprang to her feet. She was seething with a helpless sense of injustice. It was more than three years now since she had returned from Italy, a widow, to her mother’s house, and scenes of this kind were familiar enough. But all of a sudden at this moment she found the situation intolerable. It was intolerable that her mother should stand there pleading with her, holding the tray so ungracefully, looking in her shabby dress more like a servant than the mistress of the house. In a confused fury, but controlling her movements, she crossed the room and took the tray roughly from Juley’s hands.

“I’m sorry, mother,” she said. “If you want it so much I’ll go to the meeting.” But she was incapable of any accent of relenting tenderness.

“Thank you, Jo!” The mother smiled now in timid triumph. “You really will come? You promise mother not to let anything prevent you?”

“Haven’t I said I’ll come?” The girl’s exasperation brought violent shoots of pain to the back of her eyeballs. “Surely,” she thought, “mother might let it alone, now she has got her way!” And before taking the tray to the pantry, she added, “But remember it is only to please you, not to please Miss Gedge.”

Juley sighed deeply, as she went to light the gas and draw down the parlour blinds. But she looked happier. For after all, Joanna had promised to come on Wednesday night; and Joanna was not to know that the meeting in the tiny vestry of St. Saviour’s (the Low and very evangelical English Church to which Juley now went) had been specially arranged for her spiritual benefit by dear Eva Gedge. If Joanna had known, she would have been angry, and nothing would have made her yield. Was it perhaps a little unfair? As the mother swept the table carefully clear of crumbs, and strewed them outside on the window-sill for sparrows, an expression of shame did strive for a moment with the satisfied craft in her face. But it was only for a moment. The deceit, she reminded herself, if deceit there were, was for her precious child’s eternal welfare. Besides, this little gathering of one or two together, with Joanna in their midst was dear Eva’s idea. And it was dear Eva’s calling to deal with young people. Why else was she at the head of Elmbank Training College for deaconesses?